Girl On the Edge

by CD Reiss

  Shocked out of my reverie, I waved and rushed to my office before closing the door behind me. Back to the window, I put the heels of my hands on the ledge and breathed as if it was my only job.

  Wow. Okay. I could handle this. I was totally okay. A part of me could see how my desires and behaviors weren’t consistent with rationality. I could see myself crumbling under them as if I was watching a movie.

  Ronin opened the door.

  “Get out.”

  He closed it. “You and Caden disappeared on me.”

  “Sorry.” I shoved away from the ledge and pushed paper across my desk. “I have work to do. So, if that was all?”

  He bent to see my downturned face. “I want to help you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Prove it.”

  * * *

  Proving it turned out to be harder than it seemed. My blood pressure and pulse gave me away.

  “You really did a number on yourself,” Ronin said as the Blackthorne nurse took the cuff off my arm.

  “It’s just stress.”

  The nurse showed herself out, and I put my jacket back on.

  “I can’t tell if you’re consistent with other unprepped subjects taking a high dose unless you’re honest with me.”

  “And how are those subjects doing now?”

  He tightened his jaw for a moment. “Fine. We had some early testing in 2004, and they’re fine.”

  He was minimizing or lying outright.

  “So, there’s no problem,” I said.

  “I didn’t say that. We’re working to develop a counter-treatment to undo the effects. Some of the subjects are at our complex in Texas.”

  “Some? Where are the rest?”

  “We have a facility in Saudi.”

  I crossed my arms. “Long way from Abu Ghraib. That’s where they’re from, isn’t it?”

  “We’re taking very good care of them.”

  “I’m sure that outside the destruction of their psyches, they’re having a great time.”

  “You said you were fine.”

  He’d caught me in a fat lie.

  “Touché.”

  He didn’t rub it in. Had to give him that.

  “I can’t offer you a cure. But I can offer a little respite.”

  The name of my alternate rang like a bell. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. It must have been the random use of the word that bent me enough to agree to a little of what he was offering.

  * * *

  Soo-hoo-soo-hoo-soo-hoo.

  Sitting still in that little room was hard at first, but the breathing did calm me. I had to hand it to him.

  Makeup in your eye.

  Respite pushed against the barrier with a whisper. She showed me things I didn’t want to see, and I had nothing to fight her with.

  He said you looked like a raccoon.

  She was showing me Jake in the front seat of his Chevy, smoking a clove cigarette. A sight and taste I hadn’t remembered in years and didn’t want to ever, ever think about again. He said something I couldn’t hear over the wind. The picture flashed and disappeared, but Respite spoke clearly when she made me recall the scene.

  Calm down, calm down. Jake told you to calm down.

  A flicker of a Coke can. The hole at the top flashed with a flame inside it. Smoke.

  Jake: It’s done.

  Jake’s statement had cut through the fog. He was like Caden, deeply flawed and powerful beyond measure, as the flash from inside the Coke can lit his face.

  Jake: He’s got the cleanest fingers in the county.

  This was before Scott had pushed me off the diving platform.

  Respite whispered a correction. You jumped.

  I’d jumped off that platform even though I was scared of heights. Why had I insisted he’d pushed me? Because it was easy to believe I’d had to save myself from his probing hands?

  You jumped.

  That was impossible, yet I knew it was true. He’d had his hands on me even when I’d said stop. They went between my legs, and I knew bad things were going to happen. I would resist it and like it and hate it, and bad things would happen.

  You jumped to save him.

  Respite was talking too damn much, and she could go fuck herself.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  CADEN

  Casualties of the sandstorm, civilian and military, started coming in as soon as I reported for duty. They’d been hit by flying garbage, gotten knocked off their feet, been found wandering and disoriented. People came in coughing up orange grit.

  I shouldn’t have left her. She wasn’t herself. If something happened to her, I’d be responsible. If she went off half-cocked and broke every syringe they had, the consequences were on me. I’d let her go. Worse, she was splitting in two, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Couldn’t even stay with her when she needed me. I’d abandoned my duty to her. All the times I’d walked out the door of our house in New York while carrying the weight of Damon on my shoulders, had she felt like this? When I’d deployed, had she been crushed by this level of failure?

  Surgery was done, and the wall between my personal life and the job on the table disintegrated. I was going to call Greysen repeatedly until she answered. From behind, I felt a vise grip on my arm pulling me in the opposite direction.

  “I need you to stay calm.” DeLeon said as she guided me down a hall with a sun-soaked window at the end.

  “I’m calm.”

  “I didn’t say be calm. I said stay calm.”

  The view through the window got clearer as we got closer. I could see the streaks and finger spots on the glass. By the time we stopped, the rest of the hall was dark and we were bathed in the light.

  “Where’s Wifey?”

  “Why? Do you have one of her people again?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Is this what I’m staying calm about?”

  “Major. You will answer the question.”

  Damn that bird on her collar. I had no interest in admitting the answer to her any more than I had in admitting it to myself.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Okay. As long as she’s not here.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want her hearing this from anyone else.”

  “If you wanted my attention—”

  “That unit that just came in? The ones that were booby-trapped bloody?”

  “Yeah?” She definitely had my attention.

  “They were looking for the Al-Taqa Six.”

  “They found them?” I wasn’t even finished before I knew I would have seen them if they’d been found or wired with C4. “Or… they were the bait?”

  “Their dogtags were the bait, apparently. I couldn’t get more than that. But this unit raided the house thinking they’d found them. They were moved. The scene was a mess, then once they tried to take the tags…”

  “Boom.”

  “Blackthorne has ears everywhere.” She put her hand on my arm. “She’s going to find out. It should be from you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, but it wasn’t enough, so I repeated it. “Thank you.”

  “You have an early morning shift. Oh five hundred,” she said. “I need you here. No excuses.”

  * * *

  Greysen and I were safe in her apartment with the windows shuttered against the storm. I’d given her a sedative, but that seemed to only make her agitation worse. Telling her about her brother would send her through the ceiling.

  “Have you tried the circular breathing?”

  “At work.” She crossed from one side of the room to the other. “We did a session.”

  “Can you do it now?”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Why not?” I sat on the sofa and invited her to join me.

  She sat. “I can’t sit still for it.” She got up. “There’s so much I want to tell you, but it’s hard to keep my thoughts together to do it.” She cleared her throat and cringed against pain. “
It’s hard to stay in this room.”

  “What’s hard about it?”

  “I need somewhere to go. Some purpose, you know? Or it’s so uncomfortable I can’t think.”

  I got up and held her arms at the elbow, keeping her still. My gaze met hers. She looked like a caged animal. Frantic, panicked by her surroundings.

  “Your purpose is to talk to me. That’s your goal. Do you hear me?”

  She swallowed. Nodded. A little of the frenzy drained away.

  “Say it.” I knew talking would hurt, and demanding it was unfair and sadistic, but it was for her own good. “Tell me what you’re here to do.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to work.”

  “Say it anyway. You know it’s true.”

  Deep breath. “I have to tell you everything.”

  “That’s your purpose.”

  “That’s my purpose.”

  “Now believe it.”

  I held her stare for a while, trying to catch the frenetic energy as she released it and redirect it back with confidence.

  “This,” she said. “This is me. Running and driving forward. It’s not mania so much, because I don’t feel all-powerful. I don’t have an unrealistic idea of my own abilities. But there’s this push. Like I have to advance some agenda even if it changes once I finish.”

  “Stay with me. Right here.” I led her to the couch so she could sit as long as she was able.

  “When you had this thing,” she said, “when Damon was around, did you feel incomplete? Like not a whole person?”

  “Yes. I didn’t think of it that way. But yes.”

  I ran my fingers over the top of her hand. She was in so much pain. I knew that pain, yet she seemed the worse for it.

  “I feel like Respite took half of me and hid it behind a screen.” She tried to get up, but I held her hands in her lap and she stayed. “She wants to show me things, and Caden, I don’t know what they are, but I don’t want to see them. And this half of me is running while she’s just waiting. I feel it. It’s like a dead weight on me. How did you deal with it? How?”

  I didn’t have an answer that would satisfy myself or her.

  “Don’t let her own you. Don’t let her take over.”

  “She’s not trying to be me. She’s trying to help me. That scares me more than anything.”

  “Why? What’s going to happen if she helps you?”

  “Then I’m alone with it. With something. I need her to stay, and I need her to stop. It’s both and neither. I can’t make her stop, and I can’t make myself stay still.”

  Her brown eyes went glassy with a layer of tears, and her words bypassed her torn throat so she could speak in a breathy whisper. “If you took my arms and legs away, I’d know who I was. Take my eyes, my ears, I’d still be me. But my sanity?” She blinked, and the tears fell. “Who am I?”

  I tried to hold her, but she pushed me away and stood.

  “Even if I get this fixed,” she continued, “I know it can happen. I can be broken. There’s something wrong inside me. How will I ever be the same?”

  I could barely hear her through the tears and the shredded throat. When I reached for her, she tried to get away, but I grabbed her and pulled her back onto the couch.

  “Your job is to sit here.”

  “That’s not a purpose.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It’s not forward.”

  “You’re exhausted.” I wiped her tears, but there were so many I couldn’t dry her face completely.

  “I can’t sleep. Not when I’m…” She hitched a breath. “Not when I’m this way.”

  “The other one sleeps. Respite. And I think I know how to get her out.”

  “No.” She shot up. “No, I don’t want her. I’ll be this until we figure it out.” Pacing. Again. To the closed window. To the door.

  I jumped up and put my hand on the door to keep it closed. Her lips twisted into a snarl.

  “Get out of my way.”

  “I’ll tie you down whether you like it or not.” I pushed her against the door, hovering over her so closely I was a cage.

  “You can’t control me, so you threaten me?”

  “Keep feeling sorry for yourself, and they won’t be threats.”

  She pushed me away, and I pushed her back.

  “You’re crossing the line, Caden.”

  “Oh, fuck the line.” I took her chin and made her look at me. “Fuck all the lines. Draw me a million fucking lines, and I’ll cross all of them to get to you.”

  She swallowed against the pulse inside my wrist.

  “Let me go,” she whispered.

  “Let me help you.”

  “Help what? I can’t take this. I can’t take another minute. I can’t live in my own head anymore. I don’t know who I am or what I think. I’m at my limit. I can’t take it. I’ll do anything to make it stop.”

  “Let me help you.” My hand slid down to her chest. I held her in place gently, letting her know I was there without trapping her.

  “Help me what? Tell me what, and I’ll do it.”

  What did I want her to do? I was at as much of a loss as she was. I’d have done anything for her, but there was nothing to do. “You need to rest. We need to relieve the pressure from the other… Respite. Let her through. Let her help you.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You’re never going to get on the other side of this unless you do.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You just told me. You just said she’d disappear when she was done.”

  She pressed her mouth shut and averted her gaze from mine. She didn’t have an answer.

  “I know how to switch it,” I said. “Damon was triggered by the sunset. The darkness. You have a different trigger.”

  When she looked at me, she was open and curious. “What is it?”

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “Orgasm.”

  “Only you would come up with that.”

  “Hardly. It was you.” I unbuttoned her fly with a twist of my fingers. “You flip when you come.”

  She relaxed her shoulders, moving her head to the side as if she was considering the proposal. “I think you’re wrong, but it won’t hurt to try.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  I backed up to give her space, moving aside so we could go deeper into the room, but I’d underestimated her again.

  She spun around, opened the door, and walked out.

  When my wife decided to self-destruct, she went at it the same way she went at everything—with grit and resolve. I’d expected that. I hadn’t expected the speed.

  She didn’t go out. She went up, and even if she didn’t know what she was doing, I did.

  She didn’t want a rest. She wanted this to end. She was going to recreate her fear and face it.

  The stairs were outside the building. Drifts of sand had accumulated in the corners. She took the steps two at a time, using the bannister to hoist herself up faster, with me at her heels.

  “Greysen!” My voice sounded like wind.

  My view of her narrowed and folded as she stepped from the stairs onto the roof. The wind was more powerful up there, and it came from every direction. She had her knees bent and her elbow crooked over her face.

  I grabbed her free arm. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  She didn’t answer. She stretched herself toward the edge of the building. I pulled her to me.

  “I am not going to let you hurt yourself.”

  She twisted away but didn’t run. She was out of her mind. Free of sound judgment. Listening to voices that wanted her to act without thinking. I knew those voices. They’d told me to punch a wall to break my wrist. They’d made me jerk my dick bloody. They weren’t foreign intruders but the voices that we dismissed when we were in our right minds.

  We were both compelled to do something, anything, but we were being pushed in opposite directions. The difference between us was that for the moment, I was sane.
<
br />   That was the final realization. I put my love away. My compassion took a back seat to professional detachment. There were things that had to be done to save her. She had to be stabilized before she could be cured.

  She got two steps toward the edge of the building, crouching against the push of the storm.

  The wind slowed her down enough to catch. I grabbed her arm, then her waist, pulling her back against my chest. We fell to our knees with her writhing and me trying to get control of her.

  “Caden,” she said without reprimand. It was a call to her husband.

  I put my hand into her waistband. “Let me, Greysen! Help me!”

  She bent over, and I followed, jamming my hand all the way down until I felt where she was soft.

  “I don’t want Respite.” Her voice was nearly lost in the wind, but I was close enough to hear.

  “You need it.” My hand deeper between her legs, I could barely move it against the weight of our bodies and the restriction of her clothes. “Let me in. You want it too.”

  I rubbed her, and she bucked under me. Her legs relaxed and opened a little.

  The last time I’d made her come when she was a woman in motion, she’d been on top, commanding the situation. I let her have control again, moving my hand with hers as we grinded against each other. Sand skittered across her cheeks and lips. Her face was lost in pleasure. Magnificent and mine alone.

  “God, baby,” I growled.

  She answered with parted lips and a stiffened spine.

  We balled up on the roof, breathing against each other while the wind whipped around us. Who was under me? When she spoke, what would she say? Would it be active Greysen telling me how wrong I was about her trigger? Or would it be Respite, whose name was a lie?

  I knew before she opened her eyes or spoke. I knew by the lack of tension in her joints and the easy rhythm in the rise and fall of her back. Getting up on my hands and knees, I observed her, and she opened her eyes, squinting against the flying sand.

  “Respite?”

  She smiled wanly. More awake than before. More aware and somehow more dangerous.

  Part Ten

  Chapter Seventy-Nine